Eric Holder Vs. Black Panthers

Civil Rights: The Justice Department explains that it dropped a Black Panther voter-intimidation case because of lack of evidence. Pay no attention to the thugs outside the polling place. Yet another reason Eric Holder must go.

On Election Day 2008, New Black Panther Party members King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Sha-bazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint with civil violations by "allegedly" violating the Voting Rights Act through intimidation, threats and coercion as they stood outside a Philadelphia polling place.

It was what Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer and publisher of the left-wing Village Voice, called "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I've ever seen"  Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary garb, one brandishing a nightstick and saying things like, "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker!"

In January 2009, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit charging violations of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. When none of the defendants filed a response or showed up at a subsequent hearing, we'd have thought DOJ would have won its suit by default.

Instead, in May 2009, it let two of the three walk and issued a weak injunction against Shabazz forbidding him from showing up at another Philadelphia polling place with another nightstick and intimidating other voters for the next three years, an action that was already illegal. He is presumably free to do the same thing in, say, New Jersey in 2012.

No real explanation of this outrageous decision was forthcoming, and DOJ refused requests for its documentation on the case. On Tuesday, J. Christian Adams, a career DOJ attorney in the Voting Rights Section, resigned, citing his personal exposure in the DOJ's refusal to honor Civil Rights Commission subpoenas.

Last Friday, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission held a hearing on the matter to which DOJ sent Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, to explain why DOJ dropped a case it had won. He testified that "the facts did not constitute a prosecutable violation of the federal criminal civil rights statutes." Say what?

"After reviewing the evidence, the department concluded that there was insufficient evidence to establish that the party or Malik Zulu Shabazz violated Section 11(b)," Perez said in his testimony.

Perhaps Perez or Holder has not seen the YouTube video of the Panthers doing exactly what they were charged with doing or saw the statements of witnesses.

Civil Rights: The Justice Department explains that it dropped a Black Panther voter-intimidation case because of lack of evidence. Pay no attention to the thugs outside the polling place. Yet another reason Eric Holder must go.

On Election Day 2008, New Black Panther Party members King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Sha-bazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint with civil violations by "allegedly" violating the Voting Rights Act through intimidation, threats and coercion as they stood outside a Philadelphia polling place.

It was what Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer and publisher of the left-wing Village Voice, called "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I've ever seen"  Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary garb, one brandishing a nightstick and saying things like, "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker!"

In January 2009, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit charging violations of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. When none of the defendants filed a response or showed up at a subsequent hearing, we'd have thought DOJ would have won its suit by default.

Instead, in May 2009, it let two of the three walk and issued a weak injunction against Shabazz forbidding him from showing up at another Philadelphia polling place with another nightstick and intimidating other voters for the next three years, an action that was already illegal. He is presumably free to do the same thing in, say, New Jersey in 2012.

No real explanation of this outrageous decision was forthcoming, and DOJ refused requests for its documentation on the case. On Tuesday, J. Christian Adams, a career DOJ attorney in the Voting Rights Section, resigned, citing his personal exposure in the DOJ's refusal to honor Civil Rights Commission subpoenas.

Last Friday, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission held a hearing on the matter to which DOJ sent Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, to explain why DOJ dropped a case it had won. He testified that "the facts did not constitute a prosecutable violation of the federal criminal civil rights statutes." Say what?

"After reviewing the evidence, the department concluded that there was insufficient evidence to establish that the party or Malik Zulu Shabazz violated Section 11(b)," Perez said in his testimony.

Perhaps Perez or Holder has not seen the YouTube video of the Panthers doing exactly what they were charged with doing or saw the statements of witnesses.

Last August, Gerald A. Reynolds, chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, told the Washington Times, in a bit of an understatement, that the Justice Department had been offering "weak justifications."

"If you swap out the New Black Panther Party in this case for neo-Nazi groups or the Ku Klux Klan, you likely would have had a different outcome," he said.

At an April 23 commission hearing, witnesses testified to how the Black Panthers acted in concert, threatening black Republicans and whites who showed up. Two witnesses testified that they saw some would-be voters turn back and leave without voting after seeing the nightstick and being called "white devils."

As we recently noted, Eric Holder's Justice Department refuses to enforce U.S. law as written but bends it and shapes it to serve the purposes of the administration's political agenda. Tea Party members who protest the administration's policies are racists; Black Panthers threatening voters are no threat at all.

Holder will not enforce federal immigration law to protect our borders while railing against an Arizona version he has not read. He wants to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed minutes from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, having given him the same rights as the thousands he murdered. The crotch-bomber from Yemen is Mirandized minutes after failing in his attempt at a "man-caused disaster."

The iconic statue showing a lady holding the scales of justice while wearing a blindfold is meant to show that justice should be blind. In the case of Eric Holder, she is hiding her shame that it isn't.

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